April Calendar Printable

Nothing like waiting until the last minute...I thought I posted this for April but realized that I had not! Anyways, here is the free April Calendar Printable. Can you tell I am loving gray and yellow right now? Go here to download. (when I went to test the download, it is showing up with weird gray spots, but those shouldn't be in the file when you download it...its just displaying weird on the file sharing site!)

Good news is that because my life is getting crazy...I will have May, June, and July's Calendar printables ready and posted all this month as well. I was afraid if I waited then I maybe wouldn't get to it with the move.
Enjoy!


p.s. Let me know if you have any problems!

Fabric Inspiration

Lately, I have taken after one of my favorite designers, Sarah Richardson, and have been looking for fabrics to inspire me. I love that she always seems to start her design off of a fabric that she loves. I am moving to a new place and it is always fun to dream of starting fresh.

source

I found some fabric that I adore. It just spoke to me when I saw it. I so love it. Isn't it lovely? So many shades to work with and a beautiful pattern. You can see it accented in this amazing home.

The only problem is at $178/yd might be a little out of my budget! Cue fabric.com. I love looking on there for inspiration. Especially when I am stuck in my house because of rain. (It was so nice last week but my ds was sick so we were stuck inside most days...now this week is turning rainy and yucky!)
Anyways, I went looking for similar fabrics that could fit my budget and ordered a few samples of coordinating fabrics. I am thinking either accents for my living room(I have light beige leather sectional) or for my bedroom. 

 

Online these looked like they would coordinate...uh not so much! I was hoping for a main swirly paisley like pattern with light blue, a little green, tans, and maybe some ochre. 

I wanted to love this one. But it is kind of dark and more on the green side than anything. (You can't really tell here though)

This is beautiful. I really love that it is mainly a beautiful blue tone, although I would love it if it had a tiny bit of sage and ochre. Just a little bit. I'll keep looking but this fabric is gorgeous in person. Definitely an option, but I am just not sure if it allows me as much range as I was hoping for design wise. It looks great next to my couch though. I've got plenty of time to dream and plan. We won't be buying until we live in the new area for a year or so and know our way around so maybe our rental will have orange shag carpet and wood paneling and I'll have to accent that. Yikes, I hope not!  How do you get inspired? I want to find something that I can enjoy for a while without wanting to change it up too soon.

{Spring} Printables

I just wanted to share some of the Spring printables I am using to add a little bit of Spring to our home. I had some purple fringing when I took these pictures (its called chromatic aberration) so please note that these printables Do Not have purple on them! Its just the way the pics came out because the light shades I used made it hard for my lens to determine the light and dark parts of my printable I was focusing on. Plus, my lighting was all over the place. Its hard to see the colors right...I promise they are not this 'light and faded' IRL).

I decided to offer these as 8x10 jpegs. Why? Because that way you can crop them and print them as different sizes if you like. I did grey as 5x7, the yellow as 4x6, and the blue as 8x10.
(These look super cute next to my new Spring Vase.)

For gray go here

 

For yellow go here

For blue go here

 Here are a few more. I just wanted to add a warning, I always try and print and proof each printable I make.  However, things got crazy and I have not had time to test print the following printables. I am afraid if I keep waiting until I get around to it then Spring will be over!  Just wanted to give you a heads up! These are pdfs size 8.5x11. You can crop them to 8x10 as you like. Can you see the 'egg' shape? This is probably as close to an Easter printable as you'll get. I'm not much of an Easter decorator.;)

For Yellow go here
For Blue go here
For Gray go here
For Pink go here

Personal use only. Link back with credit if you can so others can enjoy them too!  Plus, it makes me more inclined to keep offering free printables! 
I'm linking to the parties listed on the left sidebar of my blog. 
Oh and its my first time linking up to this party so I thought I would share the link here too:

Hooray!

 I'm pretty excited. I was Amanda's pick at the CSI Project this past week for my OJ Bottle turned vase!

Thanks so much Amanda!

Also, I messed around with my blog design, if your in reader click on over and check it out. Let me know how it looks to you. I will probably keep messing with it, but any input would be awesome!

DIY Vase

I love adding in touches of Spring to my home. This year has been a little more tricky with my commitment to stop buying more supplies and decor, and try to re-use what I have. Well, one morning after breakfast I was looking at our empty OJ container and I thought, "I love the shape of this", next thing I know I was ripping off the labels and priming it!

First off, rip off the sticker and wash it out.

I took my metal cutters (only thing that would cut it) and cut off the top where the lid screws on. I was going to sand this to be a cleaner edge, but I got lazy and figured it wouldn't be that noticable.

Next off came my primer. I used what I had on hand which was a kilz oil based primer. I coated it a few times. After that I got my blue paint sample I had for a spring sign I coated a few coats on. It still felt like it needed something so into the craft room I went hunting.

Ah...perfect!

Next up I needed vase filler and decided to go Mathew Mead style with blossom branches. I went out the backdoor about 2 steps on the patio and found my branch with several twigs to use!

I broke off a few of the small branches and went inside to find some blossoms.

I had this stem as a leftover to a floral arrangement I made. I thought it would be perfect so off came the blossoms. Just a light tug brought them off their stems.

I just glued them on randomly 1 by 1 with hot glue. Most of them fit onto the new spring buds from the fallen branch so they were quite secure.

Super Easy and I love the final product all put together and Spring-y!

P.S. I have some adorable free Spring Printables coming up!

Have you seen this?

Okay so I came across The Inspired Housewife blog today! Dianne has some great things on there for you to go check out. My favorite is this front door-turned china cabinet. Brilliant! I am so doing this! Check it out!

Also look at this cute lamp she prettied up with fabric yo yos:

Head over to The Inspired Housewife and check it out!

Boy Birthday Cake

Today I am sharing how I made this awesome boy birthday cake. Well, I thought I was going to get off easy this year. What kind of cake would my soon to be 5 year old want? I was thinking a rectangle cake with dinosaurs or sharks on top...maybe one of the shape wilton pans I already own? I was WRONG!! I was immediately told he wants a combine cake that stands up. Okay, do you know what a combine harvester is?

Well, you get the idea. So my mind went to work...how was I going to pull this off? I am not a shaped cake maker. I have NO experience, and I really had no idea how to go about this. My main goal was to just make it look like a combine, as long as it sorta, kinda resembled one I figured I would be good. Just had to win the approval of my birthday boy. First off...the base, I decided to buy a wilton 8x8 cake plate with removable 3" grecian pillars (yep, like for wedding cakes). I made several 8x8 chocolate cakes and stacked them on the plate with layers of white buttercream to even each layer. I had to cut a piece of cake for the top. (fyi, I did use the pillars at the end to hold it up and just covered them with the wheels so it actually looked like a standing combine.)

Then added more frosting to have a complete coating of white frosting. At this point, my dh said "uh, this is supposed to turn into a combine?" Oh what little faith! Next I decided to frost this entire base red since that is the color my little boy wanted. We don't really love the taste of fondant so instead of pretty lines and yucky frosting we went with uneven lines and yummy buttercream as our base! So I found my red dye and went to town.

Let's just say there is no way this frosting was going red. So this was my result. Pink Frosting.

Yeah, thats not going to work! I used the whole bottle and it just turned it this dark pink and it tasted nasty. So into the sink it went and then ds and I headed back to the store for more powdered sugar to start the process again. I had green tint so we decided on green for the second go around. I also made some rice krispie treats to make the shapes I needed.

At this point, I kept working and forgot to take more pictures so I'll just give you the verbal rundown. I used black fondant (which I was scared of but was SOOOO easy!) to cover the wheels and to make the roller. I made a cab of rice krispies and frosted it gray to imitate the glass cab on the front of the combine. I used the box from my wax paper and cut it down to 'hold' my grain head on the front of the combine. (I covered it in black fondant as well.) I used skewers and toothpics to hold the rice krispie treats to the cake (which worked awesome). Then I added a few frosting touches like yellow to the wheel rims and some icons on the combine (inlcuding a john deere logo!). The only complaint I got from my little boy is I put the engine pieces where the grain goes...oops! Anyways, here is the final product. The cake was a big hit, and after hours and hours of work...I was just glad that it came together!

One sad thing about this birthday, is that over the course of the day it became evident that my little boy was becoming sick, so he spent dinner laying on a chair and didn't even get to eat any cake! That was monday and he still hasn't had any of his cake, poor kid!

I'm linking to parties I have listed on my right sidebar. Check em' out!

Homemade Buttermilk Pancakes

2 C. Flour
2 Tbsp. Sugar
2 tsp. Baking Powder
1 tsp. Baking Soda
1/2 tsp. Salt
3 eggs(full batch) 2 eggs(small batch)
2 C. Buttermilk
1/4 C. Melted Butter
*up to 1/2 milk(add if you need to make batter pourable)

           :Mix dry ingredients in 1 bowl.  In another bowl, beat eggs and buttermilk. Melt butter and pour over dry ingredients and then add buttermilk/egg mixture. Mix with whisk just until blended. *Add enough milk to make batter pourable (I use no more than 1 Tbsp usually). Pour drop-fulls of batter on skillet. Turn over when golden. Enjoy! (what if you don't have buttermilk? Make your own! 1 cup milk + 1 Tbls Vinegar or Lemon juice= 1 C. Buttermilk)

For my son's birthday, I decided to wake up and make him a stack of homemade pancakes to start off the day. These are so good. (Sooo much better than the mix stuff. Trust me your family will love you for making these. And they are easy!) We love these, and so I made them and piled them up with a candle on top! Needless to say, he loved it until I tried to take his picture. At that point he ran upstairs to his bedroom crying saying "I hate pictures!" Then, I hear this, "this is the worst birthday ever!" Yep, way to go supermom. 

Wish someone would have told me that raising a 4/5 year old boy is like raising a 13 year old girl. E-M-O-T-I-O-N-S!!

Spring Forward...

Time

T.I.M.E.

The magic word right? Sure wish I had more of it these days. Unfortunatly something's gotta give and lately its blogging! Hopefully things will slow down somewhat so I can post more of my fun projects and do more blog surfing to see all the cool things ya'll are up too! In the meanwhile, I'll keep working on YW, cleaning and maintaining my house, being a mom, being a wife, photography, and counting every single calorie that goes in my mouth! Believe it or not, that last one takes up a lot more time than I thought. I think its good though. So far I am down 9 lbs, now if I can just stay away from these bad boys:

 

{Girl Scout Cookies}

I practically had to run out of Kroger last night because of their little booth. I would have stopped too, but I had no cash. So I guess I will have to make sure I don't have cash until cookie season is over. Have you indulged this year? I've gotta save my treat time for my little boys 5th birthday coming up! I can't believe he'll be 5! I am designing some fun party printables and I will post them for free download soon! 

P.S. If you were curious, I have designed St. Patty's party printables twice and both times the files were corrupted! Ugh, so after working on them and having nothing to show I kinda just don't feel like doing it a 3rd time. (I created a template for them that was on the wrong setting so that was my problem.)

I'll be back soon!

Paper Shamrock Banner

 I wanted to share my little Paper Shamrock Banner.

Here's a little 'how to' on how I put the shamrocks together. First off, I used supplies from my own stash. Paper, staples, hot glue, and my paper cutter.

Here's how to assemble: If you can't read the text, go here to download the paper shamrock tutorial as a pdf.

After I made my desired number of shamrocks (I did 7), I just just used some thread I had laying around to string them on to use as a banner. I was hoping for fishing line or invisible thread, but didn't have any so this was my backup. I also tied little knots in the thread before and after each shamrock to create spacing. (am I making any sense? I am confusing myself now!) E-mail for clarification if ya need it but they are pretty simple.

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